beer gushing out of taps...

So I kegged and carbed 2 kegs and it was fine then brought it 7k ft above sea level and i have turned down the pressure of the keg to 1-2 even and released all pressure and it is just gushing out of the faucet still. It has been 2 days since we got here. Trying to figure out what to do to make it pour regular again... any insights or suggestions?
thanks!

That altitude effectively added 5 psi to the pour. Ice it down or get longer lines. I suspect the former is your only hope. Alternately, just tap into pitchers until it de-gases enough to stop foaming.

Your beer is just seriously over-carbed due to carbonating at the lower altitude.

I would disconnect all liquid and gas lines, purge through the relief valve until nothing else comes out, open the keg lid and let it sit for a few hours.

So, in the future, if I brew and keg beer, then want to take it up 7k feet or so above sea level, is there a way I can make sure it doesn't carb up as much next time? How would I know what to carb it at at home or would I carb it to what I want at home and then when we start out on the trip release the pressure to like 1-2 psi and then let it build as we go up in altitude by the normal pressure of going up?
How do you work with this?

Thanks!

Basically you gave your beer the bends


Assuming temperature stayed the same, and the setup is the same, and you are going to carb the beer at sea level, then....atmospheric pressure at 7000 feet is only about 40% of what it is at sea level, so you would carb to 40% of your normal serving pressure, for instance if you like 10 psi you could carb to 4 psi at sea level and should get 10 psi at 7000 feet.

I learn so much from this site its ridiculous!

How about if the temperature goes up to around say 70 for a day or two and then you drop it back down to about 40... then how does it change it?

Thanks! Good stuff!

Also, if you super chill the beer down to just above freezing, it should stop it from gushing out of the taps, but it will still be very carbed. You may just be able to serve it that way though.

Matteo57 said:

How about if the temperature goes up to around say 70 for a day or two and then you drop it back down to about 40... then how does it change it?

Thanks! Good stuff!

Click to expand...

The pressure increases with increasing temperature but as long as you cool it back down (and let it settle for awhile) then it wont matter.

brewit2it said:

Basically you gave your beer the bends


Assuming temperature stayed the same, and the setup is the same, and you are going to carb the beer at sea level, then....atmospheric pressure at 7000 feet is only about 40% of what it is at sea level, so you would carb to 40% of your normal serving pressure, for instance if you like 10 psi you could carb to 4 psi at sea level and should get 10 psi at 7000 feet.

Click to expand...

I don't think that's how it works. If it did, the commercial breweries would have to send special kegs / cases to places like Denver or Albuquerque. As far as I know, that doesn't happen. The way I understand it, the amount of CO2 absorbed into the beer is based only on the temperature and the partial pressure of the CO2 in the keg. That's not going to change no matter where you take the keg. Well, anywhere you're still going to be able to drink a beer anyway.

Of course, since your regulator probably reads gauge pressure (psig) instead of absolute pressure (psia), you still have to take the atmospheric pressure into account when serving or carbonating at high altitude. So if you want a level of carbonation equivalent to 10 psig at sea level, you're really looking for 24.7 psia in the keg.

Since the atmospheric pressure at 7,000 ft is only 11.3 psia, you're going to have to set your regulator to 13.4 psig to get the same effect if you want to store / carbonate at 7,000. By the same token, if you take the keg you've been storing at 10 psig at sea level up your regulator is going to read 13.4 when you hook it up at 7K. The last wrinkle is that the line balancing equations / calculators are set up for psig, so you're going to need longer lines at altitude to serve the beer at the same volumes of CO2.

So to recap:

- Your regulator reads psig (gauge pressure) which equals psia (absolute pressure) minus the atmospheric pressure.

- "Standard" atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi at sea level

- You can find the standard atmospheric pressure for any given altitude by using the standard atmosphere tables, or using a calculator like this one:
http://www.digitaldutch.com/atmoscalc/

- To adjust the force carbonation charts for your altitude, add 14.7 to the chart pressure to get psia, then subtract the standard atmospheric pressure for your altitude to get the new psig required.

- Set your regulator to the new psig and balance your lines accordingly.

Edit: I just took a look at the tables and it turns out that they're fairly linear. So instead of doing all that above, you can just add 1/2 psi to the chart number for every 1000 ft of altitude to get the new pressure you should be reading on the regulator.

gr8shandini said:

I don't think that's how it works. If it did, the commercial breweries would have to send special kegs / cases to places like Denver or Albuquerque. As far as I know, that doesn't happen. The way I understand it, the amount of CO2 absorbed into the beer is based only on the temperature and the partial pressure of the CO2 in the keg. That's not going to change no matter where you take the keg. Well, anywhere you're still going to be able to drink a beer anyway.

Of course, since your regulator probably reads gauge pressure (psig) instead of absolute pressure (psia), you still have to take the atmospheric pressure into account when serving or carbonating at high altitude. So if you want a level of carbonation equivalent to 10 psig at sea level, you're really looking for 24.7 psia in the keg.

Since the atmospheric pressure at 7,000 ft is only 11.3 psia, you're going to have to set your regulator to 13.4 psig to get the same effect if you want to store / carbonate at 7,000. By the same token, if you take the keg you've been storing at 10 psig at sea level up your regulator is going to read 13.4 when you hook it up at 7K. The last wrinkle is that the line balancing equations / calculators are set up for psig, so you're going to need longer lines at altitude to serve the beer at the same volumes of CO2.

So to recap:

- Your regulator reads psig (gauge pressure) which equals psia (absolute pressure) minus the atmospheric pressure.

- "Standard" atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi at sea level

- You can find the standard atmospheric pressure for any given altitude by using the standard atmosphere tables, or using a calculator like this one:
http://www.digitaldutch.com/atmoscalc/

- To adjust the force carbonation charts for your altitude, add 14.7 to the chart pressure to get psia, then subtract the standard atmospheric pressure for your altitude to get the new psig required.

- Set your regulator to the new psig and balance your lines accordingly.

Edit: I just took a look at the tables and it turns out that they're fairly linear. So instead of doing all that above, you can just add 1/2 psi to the chart number for every 1000 ft of altitude to get the new pressure you should be reading on the regulator.

Click to expand...

This sounds right to me. I thought it was strange that you could use half as much CO2 at 7000 feet than at sea level. But I didn't actually understand the edit. It is obvious to the OP that his keg carbed up at say 700 feet (I think that is about the elevation in Corona) is over-crabed at 7000 feet so what regulator setting would he want to carb his keg at home if he likes 10 PSI and wants to perceive the same lvl of carbonation at 7000 feet?

Sorry, brewit2it, I wrote that between tasks at work, so it probably doesn't make as much sense as I thought it would. The main idea is that you want to carbonate to the same volumes of CO2 no matter where you are. That requires the same absolute pressure (psia) inside the keg no matter what, however, the trick lies in the fact that your regulator only reads the difference in absolute pressure between the inside and the outside of the keg (psig).

If you take a look at the force carbonation charts ( http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php ), 10 psig at sea level at 40 degrees F is about 2.3 volumes. To get the regulator settings for 2.3 volumes at the various altitudes, you could go through all the steps I listed, or just add 0.5*(altitude in thousands) to 10 psig. So, to follow your example, the regulator setting he would need at home is 10 + 0.5*(0.7) = 10.3 and at 7,000 it would be 10 + 0.5*(7) = 13.5. As you can see, there's a small error in the "rule of thumb" calculation compared to the full version I did earlier (3.5 vs 3.4), but I'd consider that "in the noise." Same goes for the extra .3 psi at 700 ft - not enough to worry about.

Now if you move that keg that's already carbonated to 2.3 volumes to another altitude, it'll still have the same pressure inside of it, but the outside pressure will change, so the gauge on your regulator will read differently (13.5 psig vs 10 psig in our example) - even though the beer hasn't experienced any changes. In short, your beer doesn't care if it's in Death Valley or high in the Rockies while it's in the keg.

The trouble comes in when you take a look at the line lengths required to serve the beer. The idea in balancing your keg system is that you want the pressure of the beer at the faucet to be just above atmospheric pressure to prevent foaming from the sudden change in pressure. So now we're talking about gradually eliminating the difference in pressure between the inside of the keg and the outside - or the psig that your regulator is reading. Therefore, you need to run longer lines the higher you go.

You could use the line balancing equations / calculators for that. Or, assuming all else is equal and a line resistance of 2.5 psi/foot for 3/16" lines, you can come up with another rule of thumb: If you have a system that's well balanced, you need to add a 0.2 feet of line for each thousand feet of altitude you move that system. In this case, your lines need to be roughly a foot and a half longer at 7K than they are at sea level.

I hope that makes a little more sense.

thanks all for the info, great stuff here and really informative
I had these things morebeer suggested (although I didn't tell them where I was going) which are just ball lock connectors that have a faucet on them so there is no line. They are cool but obviously would have been better if we didn't have the foaming issue.
Aw well, next time I can tweak it with this info.... or try at least to correct it!